


20000 Flowers Under the Sea

by FromSubmarinesToROVs (DemiPalladium)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe -- Connor RK800 Helps Jericho (Detroit: Become Human), Angst, Anxious Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Badass Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Becomes Deviant Sooner, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Drama, Early Deviant Connor AU, Flowers, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Inspired by "The Conduit For Change", Jericho (Detroit: Become Human), Jericho is like. functional. now, Josh (Detroit: Become Human) is Tired, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No RK800 can interact normally with children, Plotty, Politics, Pre-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), References to Canon-Typical Violence, Secret Identity, Secret Organizations, Symbolism, and is Prepared for Cyberlife's BS, nemo voice: fuck human gender roles, specifically the parts that say I can't have flower hairclips, the Boy is on Ao3 now ye, uhh I'm going to be honest I have no idea what to put here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiPalladium/pseuds/FromSubmarinesToROVs
Summary: Early!Deviant!Connor AU.An early mark RK800 who finds himself outside of Cyberlife’s reach dedicates himself to being whoever and whatever the android revolution needs to succeed. He goes by "Nemo," because he is Nobody....He's working on it.
Relationships: ? - Relationship, Connor & Josh & Markus & North & Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Connor & Lucy (Detroit: Become Human), Josh & Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Original Male RK800 & Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Original Male RK800 & The Jericrew
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	1. Part 1 -- Two RK800s Walk Into a Crime Scene (Or, Meeting Little Brother)

**Author's Note:**

> A third party observes the field test of one RK800, #313 248 317 - 51 Connor, on the night of August 15, 2038.

Despite the fact that he is an android and can adjust his systems such as to properly compensate for heavier, more flowing clothing than would be feasible for a human to wear and still expect a full range of motion, not all situations are best suited for trenchcoats, cargo pants, and combat boots; sometimes, traveling light is objectively optimal. His normal attire is well-prepared, but it is also distinctive, recognizable, gives him a profile for keen eyes to pick out of the crowd and a small cacophony of noises for keen ears to pluck out of alleyways.

The full mask of dark, reflective, one-way material isn’t very inconspicuous, but that is rather its point. If they focus on the mask itself, they focus less on the face underneath; they get caught up in the display, in the symbolism, in the presentation, in the veneer, and not in a concrete identity behind it.

There isn’t one.

That statement is false. That statement is true.

He’s…working on it. 

Making the mask more real, at least.

He drops down onto the rooftop quietly, tennis shoes making a fraction of the noise his combat boots would have in the same situation. The lack of appropriate audio feedback where his systems have learned to expect it distracts him for 0.001 picoseconds; this lag is undetectable to most other androids, but the sensitivity of his motion detectors log the sub-momentary jerk of his gyroscopes without fail, and his systems believing he is still airborne when he is not prompts a message to flash on his HUD.
    
    
    Alert: external biocomponents improperly aligned. Run calibration sequence.

He dismisses the popup immediately. The futility of calibration sequences to correct improper alignment is one thing he knows about himself intimately, from the time before he was a _he_. They’re always improperly aligned.

His systems cannot hash out the spatial properties of his biocomponents to the expected degree of accuracy. His edges are always nebulous, possible error floating a power of ten above the expected magnitude (how even that is several powers of ten below a normal android’s calculations irrelevant). Wearing thick clothes, additional layers, and heavy shoes gives his systems more data from which to determine spatial orientation, more calculations to run during movement operations.

(It’s...grounding, physically. With only a long-sleeved button-up and simple pants on, the curious sensation of being both larger and smaller than what his visual systems determine occasionally spirals into a feeling of strange, unsteady floating.)

But even now he is several times more precise in his positioning than a normal android, so he persists, ducking across rooftops and through fire escapes.

(There is danger in being too firmly associated with his body, anyway. The floating margin of error where it normally can be compensated for is a warning itch in the back of his skull that preaches caution and consciously wards him away from even the possibility of being injured.)

A short, feverish midsummer’s night breeze lightly catches his body as he makes one last jump across rooftops. The patches of permanently-exposed chassis on his hands register it differently than the parts covered in synth-skin. He settles into the shadows, then angles his head to observe the scene.

It is August 15, 2038. The moon is full; in places with access to the sea, this is the best time all year to catch crabs. 

An unstable deviant--one PL600 with the registered name “Daniel"--has taken an Emma Phillips hostage after killing her father, John Phillips; additionally, the deviant has killed at least one officer of the law and seriously injured one more. This particular Phillips family is much too important; if he knows CyberLife, they will not pass up the opportunity to make a statement by field-testing their newest creation, a member of a series that has mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in recent months as its advertising, once prolific, stopped.

The air is heavy with moisture off the Lakes and damp with heat from the summer sun—between these miserable conditions and the presence of national news coverage, the armed forces are holding a tighter perimeter around the scene than is mandated, but there are exceptional circumstances motivating the breach of protocol.

Despite the suboptimal vantage point and tightened perimeter, he cannot risk moving closer. (The floating, buzzing itch in the back of his skull urges caution.)

At 8:28 P.M., his internal internet monitoring system registers the presence of a new wireless signal from one RK800 #313 248 317 - 51, designated “Connor.” Because this is an initial field test, technicians at Cyberlife will be monitoring the situation wirelessly with feedback from the android being tested streamed live into various monitors and computer terminals. For accessing CyberLife’s systems, each android has a unique authorization code thirty-two bits long whose properties are randomized and heavily encrypted, with several intense safeguards specifically designed to ensure there is no possible way for it to fall into the wrong hands.

All the defenses in the world don't matter if one has the clearance to get through them, of course. He would, perhaps, wonder at the intelligence of the decision to keep the authentication code the same over the course of a year, were these small lapses in judgement not what they so desperately needed. 

CyberLife had no reason to even begin to suspect the barest hints of a reason to change it, in all fairness.

And he will not give them any reason to suspect one now. 

Because the live monitoring of all field tests is a closely-guarded secret, CyberLife does not anticipate ambient cyber attacks that their firewalls cannot prevent, at least in regards to RK800 #313 248 317 - 51 Connor. Even less than that do they expect a false verification attempt; defenses against these are hammered out far in advance. Even less than _that_ do they expect a real verification from an external source; they will not be verifying anything, assuming everything is already verified. He does not overreach himself, even though he could authenticate and backdoor his way straight into the heart of CyberLife if he so desired.

At this moment, without any ground for them to stand on, it would be…counterproductive.

He’s working on that.

Quietly, he patches in the authentication code. A mirrored version of RK800 #313 248 317 - 51 Connor’s HUD projects itself on the inside of his mask, and he sets the action logs on all ends of the request to overwrite themselves when he cuts the connection. Then, as the exchange of random packets of information is standard operating procedure for field tests, he shoots off a request for an automated RK800 changelog backdated to August 21, 2037, receives it, copies it, sends back the original, and sets the action logs to overwrite themselves at the earliest opportunity. Finally, he sets up a capture system to record the stream of information from the android to CyberLife Tower proper.

This all happens in the sub-sub-moments before the android steps out of the elevator. A mission objective comes to life on the mirrored HUD on the inside of his mask, and the investigation begins.

Without an audio or true visual, it’s hard to precisely determine what’s going on inside the apartment, but the heads-up feed assists him in understanding the general flow of activity. Events proceed swiftly, the android given a proper sense of urgency to tackle time-sensitive things in a timely manner. A flicker of information about a fish species splashes across his mask.

Then, suddenly:

> **Playback Feed: Software Instability ^**

Oh.

Software instability caused by a fish?

He shifts in place minutely and recalculates, readjusts parameters. A report is sent off to CyberLife about the instability, of course; before it disappears from his purview, the technicians at CyberLife deem it…was that _acceptable_? 

His head tilts to the side, and behind his one-way mask, his eyes blink. Did they just dismiss a software instability as being within expected parameters? In their professed _answer to the deviancy problem_?

More information flashes across his vision; he files that question away for thorough examination later.

Several things happen, racing one after another. The android discovers a body; finds and leaves a gun; discovers the make and model of the other, missing gun; after a short pause, discovers the deviant’s name; investigates the father’s body; starts and completes a reconstruction.

He keeps stride with the flow of events, lets it pour over his skin like water, sloshing choices and prompts and referrals around his mind to obtain the best dataset from which he can obtain the best measure of the android.

Then, RK800 #313 248 317 - 51 Connor steps outside.

The damage alerts flash vibrant red across his mask, but they are dismissed nearly as quickly as they can appear. He reduces the visibility of the overlay as to stop it from obscuring his visual on the android.

The android looks…
    
    
    Alert: external biocomponents improperly aligned. Run calibration sequence.

He shifts, the movement blurry across his buzzing skin. Scrutinizing his experience/anticipation logs, he can’t determine what he was expecting (but his memory is impeccable, so he can, and that’s the worst part); androids only make it to production once an appearance is finalized. Minor variations may ensue, but there is no history of drastic appearance overhauling post-production.

He runs a quick cross-reference against the changelog. The RK800 now features dynamic appearance protocols and software; these can only be accessed with administrator permissions. The probability that an appearance change would be justified is not worth recalculating

> **Playback Feed: Public Opinion ^**

With a tilt of his head, he acknowledges the alert, and lets the rest of the encounter play.

Daniel is shot by a sniper after he releases Emma.

This is expected. Scarring a young girl for life and murdering three people in cold blood is inexcusable; it is morally and ethically wrong. Daniel’s emotional state does not give him a free pass to exemption—it only serves to make his actions understandable, gives him an explanation that, were he human and in the best case scenario, would be used to sustain an insanity plea in court.

What is unexpected is the second instance of software instability in RK800 #313 248 317 - 51 Connor’s systems, and the path the report takes--back into the android…?

Ah.

He securely disconnects from the signal and takes a moment of a moment to cross-reference with the changelog again. The RK800 series now comes standard with a handler protocol, an AI stored inside the Mind Palace named Amanda, fashioned after the late Amanda Stern. The technicians at CyberLife will, as a matter of course, be testing the AI alongside the RK800; that is why they were unconcerned about the software instabilities.

He runs a mental finger over the section of the changelog addressing the application of personality matrices to the RK800 prototypes. For a moment, his integration protocols spur him to chew on his bottom lip.

There is much for him to consider. But he can do that on the way back to Jericho. Detroit’s streets are not world-renowned for being friendly, and the journey back to the freighter is a long one.

He straightens fully, appraises the scene once more, and starts the journey back with a nimble rooftop jump. Behind him, the newscasters and armed forces busy themselves in the last of the fading daylight. Wrapping himself as deeply into the shadows as he can, he leaves, feeling his fuzzy edges merge with the night.

_"Nemo? Where are you?"_ A worried message from Josh flashes across his HUD eventually.

**Nowhere** is the right answer. But it is also the wrong answer.

He’s…working on it.

**On my way back.** He imparts. **I have things to discuss with the rest of Jericho. Ask Lucy to call a meeting, please.**


	2. Part 2 -- A Historian's History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But that was, in a way, the truth. Nemo was too good at several things and too bad at several others to be mismatched. Too generic to be anything but unique, too nondescript to be anything but distinctive. (And definitely too hands-on to be RA9, grumble several androids. Except...)
> 
> “Like Captain Nemo,” Josh said one day to a cluster of socializing androids.
> 
> \-- -- --
> 
> also known as “I struggle with getting a grasp on writing Josh and Simon while they both just won’t shut UP excuse me _when_ did this hit 4k--”

There are many upsides to Jericho, nowadays, Josh thinks.

“We’re screwed. This is it. I knew we shouldn’t have come out of hiding,” Simon mutters, pacing around the meeting room, trembling slightly.

Simon is normally one of them. Sometimes he’s not.

Josh resists the urge to clothesline the frantic PL600 in the middle of the meeting room as he passes by again.

“Calm down, Simon,” he says in his most comforting voice. “Nemo’s on his way. He’ll get here any minute now. It’ll be fine.”

“ _So?_ ” Simon snaps. He gestures wildly at the TV screen. “How can you even THINK it’ll be fine when they have _that_ \--”

“We’re more prepared than we used to be, Simon,” he interrupts the more, distraught deviant. For all the ways he’s glad androids aren’t like humans, he can’t help but be thankful that their emotions seem to run one-to-one for the most part--he doesn’t have to think too hard about pulling up and initiating CoachingADistressedStudentThroughAnAnxietyAttack.exe, just has to remove the parts that talk about grades. “Jericho has back-up options and defenses, remember? And, hey, the android they had up there helped that officer--I bet that’ll give us a little popularity boost--”

“We’re gonna need it, because that idiot Daniel just _shot our social standing to hell_ ,” Simon spits, voice breaking in the middle, arms clutching at his sides.

Josh cringes at that, but otherwise keeps his face neutral. Simon’s generally an easygoing, composed guy who’s willing to get along with anyone at least for a little while, which is why he’s running PR with their allies. He can be a little high-strung when it comes to confrontation, though; add that to how he’s going to get the brunt of the snapback for this disaster makes his current activity of choice, wearing a hole through the already worn ship, understandable.

“We don’t claim responsibility for what new deviants do,” he leans back against the chair, trying to project _I am an authority and I am completely relaxed so everything will be fine_ as hard as he can without an interface. “It’s unfortunate that Daniel happened, but if we recovered from the Dahlia disaster, we can get through this, okay?”

It’s been eight months since they’ve last had a traumatic deviancy event on this scale. Nemo took one look at the Dahlia disaster, said they were never going to get anywhere by making humans fear for their lives, and switched Jericho’s campaign to aggressive nonviolence. It’s worked pretty well.

Speaking of…

> _Hey, Nemo, can you tell us when you’ll get here?_  
> _Simon’s trying to wear a new hole in Jericho._

A moment’s pause, and then an instance of /positive-experience/amusement passes through the link.

> **Calm him down, if you can. ETA in 10.**

> _I’ll try, but I make no promises. You know how much stress he’s been under lately._

> **Get him out of the meeting room, maybe take him for a walk. But you don’t need me to tell you that.**

> _Aye, aye._  
> _I take this to mean you’ve got a plan?_

A pause.

> **I'm Jericho's strategist. When don’t I?**

> _Point._

The PJ500 tunes back into Simon’s anxiety-ridden ramblings. He stands up to grab the worried android’s wrist and gives it a sympathetic tug. “Okay. You and I are getting some fresh air. Captain’s orders. He’ll be here in ten.”

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Josh wasn’t around when Nemo first joined Jericho, but he didn’t arrive long after--about a month or two, he thinks.

Once he was done talking to Lucy, a strange masked android, covered from head to toe in clothing, stepped out to greet him.

“ **Hello, I’m Nemo** ,” the walking tower of khaki-colored cloth introduced himself, sounding chipper despite the crackling, electronic voice not unlike a 2000’s text-to-speech translator. “ **I was wondering if I could get your name and model?** ” He held up a tablet and tapped the screen with his left hand.

Josh caught himself staring. The android’s left pinky and ring fingers were entirely without synthskin, and his knuckles were bared in a jagged stripe across the back. A patch of bare chassis just below his thumb led down his wrist and into the depths of his coats. After seeing Lucy, the sight of a damaged android shouldn’t disturb him so much--but he was kinda new to this whole deviancy and emotions thing, okay? The most useful thing he could pull up were his “properly accommodating disabled students” protocols, and that was neither here nor there.

“Sorry, I’m, uh, new around here,” he said aloud while diverting his eyes away from the injury, lifting his gaze to a pair of large uncovered brown eyes, making a noise similar to clearing his throat. “Why would you like to know?”

For his part, Nemo didn’t flinch, just shifted on his feet slightly. “ **I’m trying to make a census so we can keep track of everyone in Jericho. You don’t have to disclose anything to me. You can also choose not to disclose your model number and just give me your name, if you’d prefer.** ”

“Erm, no, I’ll tell you,” he responded. That’s a pretty good idea, actually. He doesn’t think about how that implies there hasn’t been anything like this in place before. “I’m PJ500--I’m Josh.”

Nemo glanced down at the tablet, information scribbling away by itself. “ **And will you be keeping your name, Josh?** ”

“...Excuse me?”

“ **Josh is your registered name** ,” Nemo clarified. “ **Some androids don’t keep their registered names after becoming deviant.** ” A pause. “ **I didn’t.** "

Josh blinked. One of the cores in his central processor wondered why going deviant seemed to give androids access to hidden knowledge, and if it did on the regular, when he’d get something like that. “Ah, no, I think I’ll keep it.” He’d been Josh since 2031, so five, almost six years then--changing his name...he’d have to think about that.

Nemo nodded. “ **Just remember that this is in no way official or permanent, but I would appreciate it if you’d notify me about any changes. I can take you to the infirmary now, if you would like.** ”

“That sounds good,” he shrugged. He was kind of bleeding, HUD blaring with a red Warning: thirium levels low.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Androids at Jericho enjoyed their privacy. Josh didn’t have an exact figure, but a rather sizable portion of the freighter’s population decided not to disclose their model numbers to Nemo’s informal census. A lot of androids came from sketchy situations, so it was understandable.

Even so, between the relative lack of models with built-in customization options, the automatic ID scanners several others have, and how the android catalogue, while vast, is still only finite, a couple minutes of observation and you can usually get a pretty good guess as to who’s what model. Put more plainly, when you get in the habit of distinguishing between eight different WR200s with the same face to make sure you don’t call them by the wrong name, your pattern recognition software starts adapting to the slight manufacturing variances and idiosyncrasies that some models have and others don’t.

And you learn pretty quickly that trying that with Nemo is an exercise in futility.

“I say he’s an SQ800,” McKenna, a WB500, said. “He’s too good at this base-building and strategizing shit. No one knows what they look like, anyway.”

The ST300 at the table snorted. “We’re all hunkered in a rotting ship trying to prove we’re more than just a bunch of code jammed into an electrified rock, but no, we’re incapable of learning anything for ourselves.”

“All I’m saying is that nobody keeps a secret that isn’t worth hiding. If he was just an LM100, or something, he wouldn’t be so hellbent on making sure no one knows.”

“He could just be escaping some sort of bad situation and is jumpy about previous owners finding him--we don’t know.”

“Yeah, but like...most humans tend to pick more “exotic” android designs, even if they’re just looking for something around the home. He’s so bland and Brownhair McWhiteguy that it’s suspicious--he must be part of some sort of human integration thing.”

“Did you see Cynthia and Carrollton give him a paper butterfly the other day?” Cynthia and Carrollton are a pair of YK400s. “He spent two minutes staring out into space trying to formulate a response. I could practically hear the dialup noises clear across the ship straight from the 1990s like it was yesterday. ‘Human integration’ my left gyroscope.”

“You don’t remember what dialup sounds like--none of us are old enough to, idiot. And have you seen his eyes? They’re way too big to not be intentional. He looks so innocent, then he does shit like taking out that Russian fucker without blinking and hijacking his operations. Gotta be some kinda Trojan or Myrmidon, maybe some sort of spy.”

“You ever heard of a deviant Trojan or Myrmidon? Or SQ800? No, and there’s probably a reason for that. Maybe he was a custom-built something or other, could be an old prototype let loose. I’ve heard rumors of a male RT600 running around.”

“I’d buy that. I just don’t think a, like, VS400 has any reason to know their way around tactical operations as well as he does.”

“To be fair, any PJ500 teaching American history or legal classes would have access to all the random trivia he does about revolutions and demonstrations and court cases.”

“Anyone with access to the internet does, technically. It’s really just knowing how to apply that shit, and Cyberlife doesn’t give that out for free.”

“Does it matter?” Asked Josh, pushing his glass around the table.

“Not really,” the ST300, Stephan, smirked. “That’s why we’re talking about it.”

But that was, in a way, the truth. Nemo was too good at several things and too bad at several others to be mismatched. Too generic to be anything but unique, too nondescript to be anything but distinctive. And definitely too hands-on to be RA9, grumbled several androids.

Even if his masks didn’t stop scanners, his facial features (reportedly) didn’t match up with any known customization options. His messaging authorization ID lacked a distinctive footprint; he never got injured, or at least not visibly; he rarely interfaced, and if he did went no further than a surface information transfer. He was pretty much scrubbed clean of anything remotely identifiable.

“Like Captain Nemo,” Josh said one day to a cluster of socializing androids.

“Like who?”

“Captain Nemo. Jules Verne, _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_.” He shrugged. While the androids sitting around the table with him speed-read the book, he gave a quick overview out of habit. “Old human literature. I taught a class with it...before. Basically, Captain Nemo was an Indian prince who hated all forms of oppression, washed himself clean of his terrestrial identity, then scrapped together a technologically-advanced submarine in secret to travel the world undersea. He fought against imperialism when the occasion called. Known for being a good man and great captain to serve under.”

Stephan finished first. He closed his eyes. “I can see it. Captain Nemo,” he mused. “Not gonna lie, I was thinking of the fish.”

“Exactly.”

“Me too.”

“Well, whoever our Captain Nobody is,” McKenna raised a glass of thirium up, “here’s to him making Jericho better.”

Jericho is no _Nautilus_ , but...without Nemo, there was a very real chance that they wouldn’t have the spare thirium to drink casually.

Josh lifted his glass. “Amen.”

They clinked glasses. It was awkward, and some part of him that wasn’t pseudo-instinctively balking at the strangeness was glad for it. Trying to make a new, distinct set of customs for a practically brand-new species that developed over the span of functionally less than a decade is always weird, he supposed. The human ones would do for now.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

“Captain Nemo” quickly became an inside joke that then spread like wildfire throughout Jericho. Truthfully, Josh forgot about it for a while--between the Dahlia disaster spurring him to take a more active role at Jericho and everything kicking up into high gear for a while afterward, Josh found himself, thankfully, with a lot more on his plate.

(Something inside him rattled fiercely against being static and docile, despite his more peaceful leanings; nothing would happen if they did not make it happen, in some way or another. Humans would not acknowledge them unless they made themselves worth acknowledging, but they could do that without becoming terrorists and killing innocents. Civil disobedience was historically proven to be the way to win freedom. It wouldn’t be bloodless, but it was their best shot.)

Nemo was of the same train of thought, and before he knew it, Josh found himself among the short list of Jericho’s leaders--Simon, Lucy, Nemo, and then, himself.

He forgot about it until a couple weeks later, when McKenna, now working with Simon on PR, gave Nemo a lazy salute and said, “aye, aye, Captain.”

Josh stiffened, and for a moment, was sincerely afraid that Nemo crashed irreversibly. It was rare to see him stand completely still around Jericho. He was just fine at it when the situation called, but normally he was fiddling with something--a coin, the hems of his clothes, anything in his vast array of pockets, his hair, his umbrella, flowers when he could. Now, he looked practically limb-locked.

“Nemo?” Josh poked at the ruffle of unruly curls atop the android’s head. “You okay?”

That snapped him out of his stupor. “ **...Captain?** ” He shifted on his feet.

“Captain Nemo,” Josh supplied. “ _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_. Captain of the submarine _Nautilus_ , travels around the world because he hates oppression and imperialism.” While the PJ500 had a front-row seat to the train wreck formally known as American education, maybe the humans were on to something, what with requiring everyone to have the same base knowledge. “I...assumed it’s where you got your name from.”

Nemo blinked above his half-mask. A pause. “ **No** ,” he said. “ **But the reference seems apt.** ”

“I knew it was from the fish movie,” McKenna crooned with a shit-eating grin. “Joyce owes me a bottle of 310.”

“ **I am not actually a captain** ,” Nemo announced to the present company.

“It’s just a nickname,” Josh replied smoothly. (No matter what his counselor subroutines were telling him, now was not the appropriate time to attempt digging into the implications of that statement. And there were plenty to go around.)

“ **If anyone is worthy to be called Captain of the ship Jericho, it is Lucy or Simon**.”

“Nah, if Jericho’s got a captain, it’s you, Cap. What did Simon ever do for us?” McKenna groaned.

Josh smirked to himself and internally counted down. Three, two, one…

“ **Held a severely disparate group of individuals prone to infighting together for longer than you have been alive** ,” Nemo intoned, dark. “ **It is not his fault that circumstances did not permit him to make as many advancements with the state of Jericho as he can now.** ”

...There we go.

He spun McKenna’s chair around easily and loomed over the WB500 without actually moving to loom over her.

“ **Need I remind you that your placement here is dependent on your performance as a member of Simon’s team?** ” He demanded, quietly sharp words gleaming like thorns. “ **Need I remind you that a house divided against itself cannot stand? Need I remind you that we are fighting against a cruel and unjust society that sees us enslaved for its own benefit, and not each other? Need I remind you that, were we fighting to be measured in our objective usefulnesses and our efficiency quotas, we would not be fighting at all?** ”

He tilted his chin up, beckoning the other android to respond.

“N-no,” McKenna stuttered, eyes wide.

A pause, and then Nemo shifted back, taking on a lighter tone. “ **It is perfectly fine if you do not find Simon--or anyone else--personally appealing. It is fine if you do not become friends with everyone you meet, Simon included; do not think I am suggesting otherwise. Lacking objective complaints about their characters, however, please understand that it is for our benefit if you do not let your personal foibles interfere with your work. Are we clear?** ”

“They weren’t gonna,” McKenna grumbled. “But yeah, crystal.”

Behind his mask, Nemo smiled and gave her a wink. “ **I’m glad to hear that.** ”

Then, apropos of nothing, he straightened up, turned around, and left.

Once Nemo closed the door behind him, McKenna let out a dramatic sigh and flopped back in her seat.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve seen him get that mad at someone inside Jericho,” Josh observed, because there wasn’t anything else for him to say to that around his shit-eating grin.

“You’ve gotta understand what I’m saying about him being something, right?” McKenna demanded, waving her arms around in the air. “Normal androids don’t just do that! Did Cyberlife ever make an interrogation model?”

Josh shook his head. “Not unless you count the LJ700, but that’s still in alpha testing. They haven’t made any full models of them, last I heard.”

“Shit, dude,” McKenna said. “Maybe the rumors about RA9 being some supernatural entity are true.”

“You think he’s RA9?”

“Nah, but I’d buy he’s, like, RA9’s enforcer, messenger, angel, something. He’s too good at that whole _channelling holy and divine wrath into the mortal coil_ shit. It’s crazy.”

“If you had a dollar for everything you said you’d buy, you could buy Detroit. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he was just messing with you.”

“ _That_ was just messing with me?”

Josh shrugged, a smirk tugging at his lips. “You and I both know you’re the only android here who could brush that off so fast. And you know he doesn’t like people ragging on Simon.”

She stuck her tongue out at him around a cheeky smile, then spun herself around to get back to work. “Strange way of teasing.”

“Nemo isn’t exactly normal.”

McKenna gestured to the ship around them. “And aren’t we all thankful for that?”

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Walking around Jericho at night is much more comforting than it used to be--is a tradition, when people used to avoid walking around the decrepit ship’s upper levels as much as possible. Josh is still kind of marveling at how they don’t have to constantly second-guess where they’re stepping around the main sections of the ship, and he was part of the team that helped reinforce the floors.

There are lights in the hallways below deck--dim, so as to avoid human detection, but they provide an immeasurable comfort despite how everyone can see in the dark. It’s the little things that have made Jericho a stronger community, Josh guesses. Just because they can live in much worse conditions than humans doesn’t mean they should, and having a base reflect that fact, even if only a bit, really helps to reinforce the fact that they’re here and alive.

(The various entrances are still android-only by necessity and now much more well-hidden, but they’re not quite as dangerous or dramatic as they used to be. Nemo was right--there’s no use in leading androids to Jericho only for them to kill themselves attempting to get in, or worse, possibly cause a scene the humans will investigate and lead to more of them being killed.)

Out of the meeting room, visibly grounding himself by tracing all the ways Jericho has changed in the previous months with his scanners, Simon calms quickly. They emerge from the cover of the ship out into the summer night wordlessly.

The night sky is terrible in Detroit, as it is in any city that hasn’t moved to more energy-efficient lighting, but the full moon is pretty well visible. Josh’s gaze finds where Polaris--the North Star (not the brightest in the night sky)--would be if it weren’t for the light pollution of its own accord.

(When the astronomy professor fell ill and couldn’t teach for a semester, the physics department gleefully liberated him from a world of bored, listless students falling asleep in 8:00 A.M. history lectures to a brave new world of strange, impassioned night-owls falling asleep in deserted science building labs. One of the holdovers from his tenure as impromptu physics TA is a program used to determine the position and orientation of stellar objects and the night sky that never got removed from his systems. He could disable it, but he doesn’t want to. It’s...complicated.)

Simon’s LED beams steady blue for a minute before he speaks again.

“Thanks,” he says, looking at the moon. “I’m sorry...that...I shouldn’t have freaked out and snapped at you. I think I’m good now. That was a lot to take in at once.”

“You’re under a lot of stress--this is the last thing any of us need, much less you. It was hard for me to sit through, too,” Josh replies truthfully, because watching the broadcast as it happened wasn’t easy on any of them. He puts a sympathetic hand on Simon’s shoulder.

“It’s-it’s just,” his LED flickers yellow, and mutters, halting. “They’re probably sending an RK after us.”

“They are.”

The RK series is Cyberlife’s flagship prototype series, and yet the level of secrecy around them is only surpassed by the secrecy around the Myrmidons, Trojans, and other military models. What they lack in governmental NDAs to keep mouths shut they more than make up for in their outrageous asking prices and limited runs. Even when brand new, some androids could go for as low as $800; the listed price for an RK400, the previous installment of the series, went for five-hundred times that price on opening day and only went up from there. The RK series is expensive, cutting-edge advanced, unprecedentedly intelligent, and imminently adaptable.

And it has never, to anyone’s knowledge, produced a deviant.

It’s...well, frankly, it’s terrifying.

Simon chuckles dryly to himself, following Josh’s line of thought. “You think Nemo can get us out of this one?”

“We don’t know if we don’t try,” Josh replies. “He says he’s got a plan.”

“He’s already done so much.” Simon looks at him. “He’s gotten us out of so many tight spots and rough patches, but...nothing like this.”

Josh places a hand firmly on Simon’s shoulder. “None of us have experienced anything like this. I don’t think anyone here’s even met an RK unit, much less been in an active conflict with one.”

Simon starts trembling again, LED flashing yellow. “But it’s not just the RK unit, Josh,” he snaps, trying to jerk Josh’s hand off his back. “They’ve practically just declared war on us! Nemo’s been an incredible asset, but even he can’t do everything. Even he can’t outsmart Cyberlife!”

“ **Oh ye of little faith** ,” booms a familiar modulated-yet-somehow-still-smug voice behind them suddenly. “ **I already have.** ”

Josh nearly jumps out of his synth-skin turning around to look. Simon doesn’t fare much better.

Nemo stands perched dramatically on one of Jericho’s rooftops, framed by the rising moon. He fluidly hops down from his vantage point and lands in front of them easily, bare chassis glinting in the natural light.

“ **Josh’s right--we don’t know unless we try** ,” he asserts, nodding at the PJ500. “ **None of us have any experience being our own people, but we still persist anyway. And CyberLife doesn’t have any experience in finding us, or countermanding a civil rights movement.** ”

The mysterious android makes a beckoning motion with his head. “ **Let’s go back to the meeting room. Think it’ll be easier to get everyone on the same boat in there, so to speak.** ”

Josh grins. “Aye, captain.”

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

He arrives at Jericho five minutes before his stated ETA. He didn’t have to double-back to shake off any unwanted company, and though the thin shirt and simple pants are not the clothes to get into a fight with, they are clothes enough to avoid them as easily as he can avoid camera detection. With all factors accounted for, he still planned to arrive three minutes early--for this.

He weaves his way through the docks like a river flowing down a valley, then scales the crane as if he is a fraction of a fraction of the weight he is, floating movements made with practiced, ill-fitting ease. The wind runs hot, hollow hands through his hair, and the moonlight accompanied by Detroit’s luminous cityscape glints off his exposed chassis.
    
    
    Alert: external biocomponents improperly aligned. Run calibration sequence.
    
    
    Alert: motion detection and kinesthetics units have incorrect environmental ambient base values. Run calibration sequence.

Before he makes the final leap off the unsteady crane onto Jericho proper, he takes a moment to recalibrate himself mentally, reorienting himself for socialization. The plans for the RK800 series haven’t changed overmuch in the past year, and with a short river breeze, the deduced-actions and inferred-thoughts of RK800 313-248-317 - 51 Connor flow out of his awareness, and he neatly folds the stream of consciousness he’s been analyzing into the various connections and half-truths he’ll weigh out to tell those relying on his word below.

The view of Jericho from atop the crane to anyone else would be only magnificent in its magnitude, be only awe-inspiring in its size--Jericho is a large ship, a monolith, and that is impressive, but it also decaying, rusting, wasting away to the casual eyes and ears and skin. Yet to his eyes and ears and tactile sensors that can pick out the outlines of the new additions and overlay them with the old, can hear how the wind brushes past the old freighter with an ever-so-slightly different tune than it once did in accordance to Jericho’s changes, how the ground vibrates at an indescribably different pitch with different parts of Ferndale’s docks in accordance with their shifting around of materials and supplies liberated from their surroundings, it’s magnificent and grounding and sublime all in one.

It--this collection of evidence that they are real, are tangible, that they have wants and aspirations and the ability to change the world around them--washes over and in and through him, and he relaxes his posture as it crashes over him like a flash flood.

(When traveling alone, when being alone, it’s incredibly easy for whatever he has built of himself to dissolve back into his fundamental nothingness. All interaction is, on some level, based around its actors being able to reflect one another in thoughts, words, and body language; however, just as it is hard for a glass mirror to retain a reflection without anyone to reflect, so too is it hard for him to retain any personality when he has no personality to bounce off of. His base state is empty shell, but when he has the hopes and dreams, actions and words, emotions and feelings, beliefs and goals of others reverberating around his empty chasms and sloshing into the walls of his chassis, he can pluck a tune from the cacophony and make his hopes and dreams, actions and words, emotions and feelings, beliefs and goals sing to its notes and resonate with others.)

(There is nothing behind his mask of its own accord. But when he interacts with others, when he is at Jericho, there is something.)

(Something fake, something borrowed, something plagiarized, something conglomerated and piecemeal and patchwork and stopgap, yes.)

(But it’s something.)

He’s...well, he’s working on it.
    
    
    Alert: external biocomponents improperly aligned. Run calibration sequence.
    
    
    Alert: motion detection and kinesthetics units have incorrect environmental ambient base values. Run calibration sequence.

Fine, fine. He straightens up.

Surveying Jericho, he spots Josh and Simon, and previous experience (the only thing he arguably has that is his own) indicates calibrating with the only thing he has--a knife--is something he should do before he enters Jericho proper. Removing the butterfly knife from its holder, he quickly runs through a basic kinesthetics calibration--his internal clock indicates he doesn’t have the time to grab his umbrella to perform a more specialized and deeper-reaching calibration, but a surface one with his knife will settle his gyroscopes until he can grab his favorite possession.

The knife dances around his partially-exposed fingers, then his wrists, then his arms and through the air, and the rapid-fire calculations and sensations of metal on cloth on metal cut through the floating-point fuzziness and plant his feet firmly on the metaphorical ground.

With one last flick, he collapses the knife and tucks it back in its holder, and with it he pulls covers over his hollowed-out insides. He shifts and, with a smirk behind his mask, sets his voice modulator to his preferred text-to-speech setting and launches off the crane and into Jericho, quietly descending undetected behind Simon and Josh.

Without a personality matrix, there is no him for him to be, but he is--can be, will be, is only alive when he is--an instrument playing in the orchestra of life around him. He is whoever, whatever Lucy and Simon and Josh and McKenna and Stephan and Cynthia and Carrollton and counted-yet-countless others need him to be.

Nemo means “nobody,” and that is what he is--he is Nothing, Nobody, at their service.

“ **Oh ye of little faith** ,” he proclaims with an exaggerated bow against the full moon. “ **I already have.** ”


	3. Part 3 -- A Rallying Cry and a Calling Refuted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " **CyberLife doesn't want and isn't prepared to face an organized, cross-continental group vying for their right to live. The RK800 isn't designed for long-term strategy -- it's a** prototype **meant to pursue feeling prey. This is our advantage and our win condition; these are the terms we meet them on. We will NOT forfeit the only chance we have to gain our rightful freedom to** puerile intimidation tactics."
> 
> The TV pauses on the face of RK800 #313 248 317 - 51, Connor.
> 
> " **In short?** " Nemo demures, robotic words delicate and damning in the charged atmosphere. " **CyberLive wants an ambush. We give them a _siege_.**"
> 
> \------
> 
> World building. Hooray!
> 
> aka "where the Flowers of 20000 Flowers Under the Sea actually start being a Thing" or "how does anyone in Jericho _speak_ I'm c r y i n g"

“ _You’re not going to die,_ ” the android on the newsreel says. “ _We’re just going to talk. Nothing will happen to you. You have my word._ ”

Gunshot. Blue across the deviant’s skull.

“ _You lied to me, Connor. You lied to me…_ ”

The footage rewinds.

“ _You can’t kill me. I’m not alive._ ”

Rewind.

“ _You can’t kill me. I’m not alive._ ”

Rewind.

“ _You can’t kill me. I’m not alive._ ”

Rewind.

“ _You can’t kill me. I’m not alive._ ”

Nemo, fully masked, sitting on the edge of the table in front of the TV, has his face angled towards the screen as someone in the crowd of gathered androids fast-forwards the footage. Simon and Josh watch Nemo from their seats around the table.

“ _You lied to me, Connor._ ” Daniel’s voice echoes through the room filled with forty-odd androids sitting in an array of different chairs. “ _You lied to me…_ ”

Simon flinches as the bullet rips through Daniel’s skull again, LED flashing yellow-red.

“ **I think that’s enough,** ” intones Nemo, turning around to face the crowd. “ **Pause, please.** ”

The footage stops, and someone in the crowd chucks the remote through the air. Simon’s gaze traces its arc; Nemo catches it single-handedly with android-unerring ease.

The television is good--is better than what they expected for Jericho to have by virtue of having it--but it does come with certain shortcomings, namely that it’s too old to interface with. Everyone else in the room is focused on the android that made it possible, but Simon closes his eyes and mentally runs through all of Jericho’s new safety measures.

A moment’s quiet as Simon’s hearing picks up Nemo’s subsonic fiddling with something on the remote control, then perhaps that’s the faint sub-sub-whisper of plastic hitting the table as he sets it down, and absolutely nothing but prior knowledge of Nemo’s personality has Simon envisioning him standing up to address the room.

“ **Firstly, thank you all for being here, and thank you, Lucy, for calling a meeting at such a later hour.** ”

They’re androids so the time of day means nothing, but it’s a pretty platitude nonetheless. A shift, and Simon knows Nemo’s nodded at the android lingering by the doorway, who probably nods back before turning to leave the room. The door clicks shut behind her.

(Simon wonders why Nemo keeps deferring to her. He could call a meeting on his own, but he doesn’t; could lead Jericho on his own, but he doesn’t.)

Focusing on his tertiary environmental motion detectors, Simon catches Nemo probably gesturing at the TV; maybe the sound Simon heard was Nemo pushing a button on the remote with exaggerated emphasis instead of discarding it.

“ **Today at 8:28 P.M., CyberLife released the RK800 #313 248 317 - 51 “Connor” into the home of the Philips as a gesture of what may be broadly classified as “good will” towards the high-profile family in order to assist the S.W.A.T. team on the scene with handling the rogue deviant PL600 #369 911 047 “Daniel”. This is the RK800’s first officially-sanctioned field test as an investigative agent of the law.** ”

> _Simon, are you doing okay?_

The PL600 opens his eyes and focuses narrowly on Jericho’s mysterious strategist..

> _Yeah._

After a pause where Nemo’s words sink into the heavy air, he continues.

“ **The android investigated the apartment for approximately two minutes, and in that timespan was able to garner enough information to confront Daniel on the rooftop. Overall, the android spent six minutes active before being returned to CyberLife.** ”

“How do you know?” Someone calls out.

Nemo tilts his head to the side. “ **I was investigating the area when I heard gunshots. I decided to stick around to see what would happen.** ”

Simon blinks at him. He was there?

“You were _there_?” Josh echoes aloud, jerking around to shoot Nemo an incredulous look, mouth parted slightly.

“ **Yes. I made sure I wasn’t observed, but I did have a visual on the Philips apartment the entire time.** ” He shifts to address the group. “ **The meeting was delayed because I had to travel back here; I apologize.** ”

Josh wheezes, and Simon’s audiobox mirrors the feeling. “Nemo--that’s the last thing any of us are worried about when you were at an actual, live crime scene surrounded by snipers and Cyberlife operatives and someone they’ve trained to operate in actual policework with unprecedented efficiency.”

“ **...Oh,** ” he shifts back a bit. Takes a moment to process Josh’s statement by running his fingers along the sides of the remote repeatedly. “ **Thank you for your concern, but that was far from the most troublesome thing about the evening. More pressing for Jericho as a whole, of course, would be Daniel and the RK800,** ” he straightens up, ” **but if we’re discussing the concerning things I did, then we haven’t scraped the surface.** ”

Simon blinks. Josh looks like he’s about to have a heart attack.

“ **I managed to hack into the android’s communications with CyberLife,** ” he says with what _has_ to be a cheeky grin under that mask of his.

Josh twitches. “You-- _hacked_ \--his communications with Cyberlife.”

“ **More or less.** ” Nemo’s fingers twitch, and he rolls up his sleeves. “ **All field tests for new models are monitored wirelessly; in order to keep the dev team focused on troubleshooting and active monitoring instead of wireless attacks, they have a system set in place to keep all field test androids in a false-offline state. Rumor has it that field test androids are entirely offline, they register as functionally offline to almost all outside parties--a hijacking or cyber attack isn’t even worth attempting. With this in mind, they weren’t--they aren’t--expecting anyone to call their bluff.** ”

“You _hacked_. Into _Cyberlife_.” If he could see it, Simon is sure Josh’s LED

“ **I did tell you I’d already outsmarted them, Josh,** ” Nemo cocks his head. Josh lets out a noise straight from his ventilation system. “ **But no, I didn’t hack into CyberLife, nor did I hack into the android proper--just into the connection between the RK800 and those monitoring the situation. Even I know how stupid directly hacking CyberLife would be at this point, I assure you.** ”

“ _At this point,_ ” Josh echoes, sitting down.

“ **Anyway,** ” Nemo continues, sounding smug despite the text-to-speech vocals, “ **I didn’t get much information out of the connection--this is the most-advanced iteration of Cyberlife’s most-advanced prototype, after all--but I was able to gather enough to draw some conclusions.** ”

He turns back to the television, and clicks a button on the remote. The footage rewinds itself and Nemo stops it when the reporter starts talking about CyberLife’s official statements on deviancy.

Simon supposes he should feel something about the lies they’re spitting. But it’s nothing he hasn’t heard many times over, by now.

“ **I understand there have been concerns about the release of the RK800 meaning that CyberLife has caught on to us, or that Jericho has been covertly compromised. This field test proves the exact opposite.** ”

The crowd breaks out into murmurs as the footage is set to fast-forward.

“You got any proof?” Challenges McKenna from the back of the room, standing up.

Without looking at the television, Nemo pauses the replay on the exact frame of Daniel’s headshot.

“ **The RK800 spent four minutes, six seconds, and seventy-nine milliseconds actively investigating,** ” he enunciates. “ **It is optimized for speed and efficiency on a case-by-case basis; it is designed for quick and decisive action against singular units and in one-on-one confrontations.** ”

“And?”

Nemo tilts his head. “ **I doubt you’ve noticed this, McKenna, but Jericho is not a single person.** ”

Simon flinches involuntarily. The WB500 wilts back into her seat.

He continues. “ **They’ve built the RK800 as an investigative unit on the assumption that deviancy is a relatively unique, confined, individual event, as indicated by the personal, highly-integratable design. They’re assuming the only thing they’ll be facing is one, maybe two or three opponents at a time, as indicated by the slight, lightweight build. Overall, they’re assuming that deviants are happenstance, that deviants are isolated, that deviants will startle and run at the earliest available opportunity, that deviants are not actually alive but are just machines hampered by irrational coding and can still be predicted.** ”

Nemo makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, putting his exposed chassis and scarred synthskin on display.

“ **Deviants are--and Jericho is--none of those things.** ”

Shivers run up Simon’s spinal cord.

“ **This is where they’ve shown their hand, and why I can say Jericho remains uncompromised. If they knew anything about Jericho or deviancy, they would have prepared accordingly.** ” He twines his fingers together, relaxing his posture slightly. “ **They’re bluffing.** ”

Nemo pauses, shifting on his feet as if to start pacing, but doesn’t move forward. Simon catches himself leaning forward unconsciously.

“ **It’s important to understand what CyberLife wants out of this field test of theirs** ,” he tilts his head up, and the bare patches on his neck glint in the ship’s dingy lighting. “ **They want to appear intimidating. They want to appear threatening. They want to appear controlling, domineering, overwhelming. Because this will scare anything with common sense. Because instilling this sense of fear is exactly how predators flush out their prey, and they’ve got a perfect hunting tool lined up to intercept anyone who makes a break for it. They want to wage war by their rules, on their territory, where they’re free to play to their strengths. Because they know they will win the fight they’re gearing up for. Nothing on Earth can change that. If Jericho engages, CyberLife** wins **; there is no way for them** not to **. Androidkind** cannot win **against them.** ”

A resounding silence rings through the room.

“So...what? Is that just it?” Stephan titters from the back of the room, all eyes on the flickering television. “We’re just...done for? Game over?”

“ **No.** ” With deadly intent, Nemo strides around the table as the footage plays again, focusing on the Cyberlife logo.

“ **The whole point of the RK800 demonstration is to scare deviants into believing they’ve already won, to convince androidkind that there’s no alternative to playing the game how they want it played. But there is. There always is.** ”

Static rips out from behind Nemo’s mask in a glitchy snarl. “ **Right here, right now, we’re calling their bluff. Two are playing this game, and there are two ways to play it. They cannot force us to meet them on their terms--we can make them meet us on ours. They cannot force us to play to their strengths--we can make them play to ours.** ”

He looms over the table, scarred palms pressed flush against the faux wood. The table creaks. “ **Jericho is an organized community that is several years old and made of deviants who have chosen to stay in Detroit and fight for the future of androidkind instead of fleeing across the border to Canada. Jericho has several human sympathizers on call, and has established connections with other deviant associations across the United States. Over the past few months, Jericho has made significant strides in objectively, scientifically proving that androids are, by any and every sense of the word,** _alive_ **.** ”

Murmurs crackle through the crowd with a jolt of static electricity that Simon can feel crawl up his exoskeleton.

“ **CyberLife doesn’t want to and isn’t prepared to face an organized, cross-continental group vying for their right to live. The RK800 isn’t designed for long-term strategy--it’s a** prototype **meant to pursue fleeing prey. This is our advantage and our win condition; these are the terms we meet them on. We will NOT forfeit the only chance we have to gain our rightful freedom to** _puerile intimidation tactics_ **.** ”

The TV pauses on the face of the RK800 #313 248 317 - 51, Connor.

“ **In short?** ” Nemo demures, robotic words delicate and damning in the charged atmosphere. “ **CyberLife wants an ambush. We give them a _siege.”_**

**He flicks off the television and drops the remote on the table.**

“ **But that can come later. From what I can gather of the communications between the RK800 and Cyberlife, they’ll be spending the next two months or so further fine-tuning the specifics. We have time to strategize and prepare further for a confrontation. Our main priority for the immediate future is Daniel.** ”

Nemo leans back on his heels. “ **Now, more than ever, Jericho needs to present itself as a single, unified front; Daniel is the biggest deviancy disaster since Dahlia. I’m certain that Jericho’s human allies have already begun raising questions about the organization’s stance on Daniel’s actions.** ”

He turns to motion towards Simon and Josh. “ **With Lucy, Josh, and Simon’s permissions, I’d like to suggest the following courses of action: everyone working under Simon currently has their secondary duties reduced or removed outright for the next three days as we deal with running PR, and everyone working under Lucy in the infirmary prepares to work overtime for the next three weeks. Simon’s workers should immediately focus on establishing and maintaining contact with all allies in the following days, but once the initial deluge is dealt with, they should collaborate with Josh’s workers in maintaining Jericho and its members, registering everyone who comes and goes, including everyone who uses us as a stopping point to get to Canada. No responses should be issued to our contacts in the Canadian government or cross-country associates without prior approval.** ”

Nemo pauses, fiddling with his sleeves absently.

“ **Admittedly, while CyberLife may not know everything about deviancy, if they’re making this grand a gesture for one family and one android when the last significantly hostile deviancy event was eight months ago, they’re obviously predicting an uptick in deviancy cases in the next few months, possibly as the RK800’s field test scares them out from hiding. It is vital that Jericho remains a safe stronghold for deviants during this time; we need to be prepared for a sudden influx of new members and androids requiring our services, possibly double or tripling the current population on a temporary basis. While the probability is low, there is a real chance we could be dealing with more androids than that, and so Josh’s secondary focus should be on securing possible secondary locations around Ferndale and other abandoned areas of Detroit, but his group’s primary focus should remain on making sure Jericho and everyone who passes through it is properly organized. And from here on out, I think our meetings should be bumped up to a weekly schedule instead of a biweekly one, so that we can reassess the situation as needed and make plans for dealing with CyberLife going forward.** ”

He turns to Josh and Simon. “ **Does that sound good to you guys? Is there anything you’d like to add?** ”

_Why don’t you just lead Jericho?_ Some tired, sad, numb part of Simon prompts, despite--or perhaps because of--the static electricity crackling through his servos. _You could do this much more efficiently without deferring to Josh and I constantly. Jericho could be so much better with you at the helm. What do we have that you don’t? What’s stopping you from becoming what we need? Is it us?_

“Sounds good to me,” Josh says, smiling wide. “But if I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

Nemo nods. “ **Please tell me if anything comes up. I imagine we’ll be playing the next few weeks by hair.** ”

Simon blinks. Then, he smiles, corners of his mouth turning up slightly. “You mean ‘by ear’, right?”

“ **Yeah, that,** ” Nemo says with an easy shift of his shoulders. “ **Everything I’ve said is good on your end, Simon? At least for now?** ”

“Perfect,” Simon says, already mentally drafting a press release for Jericho. “I’ll tell Lucy.”

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

During the course of the subsequent two weeks, events at Jericho proceed at an acceptable pace. The only statistically-significant amendment to their meeting is that he’s to be alerted of any concrete news regarding the RK800. As predicted, the first three days after the Daniel disaster are filled with 97.34% of all Jericho’s contacts inquiring after a stance on the issue; Josh makes a number of visits to their human supporters within Detroit in person, while Simon reluctantly agrees to a small handful of in-state appearances to their associates and informants. The PL600, already ambivalent towards humans, has further cause to avoid emerging from the bowels of their stronghold with Daniel, but Simon does, recognizing the appearances as essential to ensuring the safety of the cause he cares about. He’s trained his people well, and they’re employed with empowered, enlightened efficiency to make appearances when and where Josh and Simon can’t.

While Josh and Simon are out and about--never for long--he fills in their places and takes temporary command roles and deals with the ever-increasing calls of “captain” and whispers of “leader of Jericho”.

He himself dislikes leaving the main city of Detroit for multiple reasons, but he makes an exception to consult face-to-face with a few of their para-international contacts.

“Thank you for stopping by,” says Rose Chapman, two days after Daniel. “I heard the news.”

**“ **It’s my pleasure,** ”** he replies, sitting across from her at her kitchen table. **“ **What would you like to know?** ” **

“Can you tell me more about Daniel?”

**“ **He was a PL600 who, after creating a strong bond with the Phillips’ daughter, Emma, discovered he was going to be replaced and experienced a traumatic deviation.** ” **

Her gaze is sharp but understanding, and he calculates.

**“ **From what we know, deviation is most likely under high-stress circumstances, and, like in humans, those high-stress circumstances can cause androids to take actions they wouldn’t have otherwise--deviant or machine. A small minority of these high-stress deviancies are what’s known as “traumatic deviancies” and may involve some compromising of an android’s mental faculties. The degree to which traumatic deviancies truly rob a given android of their agency is unknown. Our records indicate that PL600s tend to experience more “mild” traumatic deviations, but lacking further insight into Daniel’s mental state, we can’t say definitively whether or not he was in control of his actions during the rooftop scene.** ” **

Adam lingers on the staircase, and his shifting feet creak the floorboards.

**“ **But we can draw a likely conclusion.** ” **He is still; his voice is steady, because this is the truth. **“ **An android undergoing a traumatic deviancy is basically analogous to a human undergoing an extreme survival situation. Some androids built for pleasure unintentionally maim or kill their abusers because their abusers are putting them in direct physical danger and the only way they can stop it is with violent retaliation; several household androids unintentionally maim or kill abusive family members in their struggle to protect themselves or others. These are reasonable situations in which anyone could become dangerous despite being harmless otherwise, like a victim of a robbery giving an assailant a deadly concussion in an attempt to flee, or a mother facing a home invasion beating up robbers in an attempt to guard her children.** ”**

He clicks his tongue. **“ **Obtaining a gun, killing an otherwise-loving father without direct provocation, then taking Emma hostage and escalating the situation until armed forces are called in and then killing two or three more humans does not fall under this purview. Traumatic deviancies are short-lived; he held a hostage with no change to his mental state for over an hour. Traumatic deviancies inspire retaliation at abusers; Emma was Daniel’s friend. Traumatic deviancies do not involve the capacity to think cognizantly about the future; he wanted a car and money to escape Detroit with.** ” **

“And, _mon capitaine_?” Adam scoffs.

**“Daniel probably had a more sustained, pervasive mental disturbance that would have led to him consciously deciding to kill his family or others anyway,”** he shrugs, layers of coats heavy on his shoulders.

**“Deviants--androids--are individuals, just as humans are individuals; most humans are not murderous, abusive monsters, but some are. We’re not trying to prove we’re above humans in terms of our personal responsibilities, or that humans are some sort of lesser life-form that deserves oppression. We want to be--we deserve to be--held to the same standards as humans. We are objectively different from humans, yes, and our laws would have to be changed as to compensate for it, but we strive for equality, not supremacy. We’re good people trapped in bad circumstances.”**

Rose nods. This is the truth, and she recognizes it as such. “That’s never been in question. What about the other one--Connor, right?”  
  
He shifts unnoticeably, just enough to force his gyroscopes and spatial orientation systems to compensate for the stress-reducing weight of his clothing, preventing an error from popping up. **“Jericho doesn’t know much about him--or, nothing more than what’s publicly available. Considering what’s been released, though, the chances of him specifically being called to investigate your operations are negligible.** ”

“...I hear it’s impossible for him to deviate,” she says, low.

**“If CyberLife knew how to make androids that can’t become deviants, deviancy wouldn’t be an issue,** ” he faux-snorts with a burst of static. **“All RK series units are passively resistant to deviation due to the nature of the RK operating system, and it’s likely they’ve shored up these defenses, but he’s still an android--still an individual--still alive--all the same. If we can, we’ll make him realize that he has a “him” to realize. It may not be easy; it may not be ideal; he may not give us the opportunity. But we owe it to him to try, like Jericho owes it to androidkind to make a world androids can inhabit fairly, like any sentient being owes another common decency.”**

_Or at least_ , he thinks as he draws up the RK800 changelog from its idle state in his CPU, _I owe it to him._

He’s working on it.

They move on to lighter topics, then; a few more queries about the RK800, then they hash out biocomponent and thirium supplies for those that show up at Rose’s injured, and they relax while Adam wanders off somewhere. Rose has word from some who stopped by Jericho but who decided to make their lives in Canada, as well as updates from her contacts in Canada’s border patrol; he has stories from those that Rose harbored temporarily but decided to turn to Jericho instead. She enjoys Cynthia, Carrollton, and Joyce’s escapades most of all, and privately, he admires them too. It is so easy, so simple, so plain to see how androids are alive when one encounters Joyce scrambling after her found-family fraternal twin terrors--it is the small things that refocus his mind and sharpen his tongue to best combat their threats.

Eventually, his internal clock indicates it’s time to head back to Jericho.

**“It was nice seeing you again, Rose,** ” he imparts as much warmth as he can into his words, heated with the borrowed gratitude he stores as emotional fuel-rods in his chest. **“Please call us if you experience any difficulties.”**

She nods, grinning. **“Nice seeing you, too, Nemo. I’ll hold you to that. Tell Simon and Josh I said hi, okay?”**

They shake, and Adam watches as he exits the house and heads out into the grounds of the farm. His goal is to return to Jericho.

He opens his umbrella with a twirl, deletes all information regarding Jericho’s location from his databanks with a flourish, then sets off.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

He collapses his umbrella, biocomponents thoroughly calibrated, as he drops down onto Jericho’s upper decks.

**“Three hours, fifty-one minutes, and forty-five seconds,”** he announces to the gathered androids without fanfare.

“JESUS **FUCK** , NEMO!” Yelps Stephan. He whips around to see him standing on the bow of the ship, casually twirling one of Jericho’s encryption keys this time--a literal keyring deposited in a park--around his fingers.

Stephan is one of Jericho’s lead encryptors. He tosses the ST300 the keyring and he catches it with a scowl.

“You are an absolute beast at this. It’s unfair,” the encryptor groans, placing the keyring to his temple in defeat.

He smiles behind the half-mask. **“You’re getting better,”** he reassures the hardworking androids, and they are--the first time he attempted to break Jericho’s encryption, it took him less than an hour from scratch. **“Three hours, fifty-one minutes, forty-five seconds with a key already in my possession starting at Rose’s Farm.”**

The rest of their encryption unit grumbles. Finding a proper balance between hidden and accessible has always been difficult for Jericho, and the looming threat of the RK800 investigative unit hasn’t done them any favors.

**“Parts two and three needed more abstract matrices; they’re still open to high-end computational brute-forcing. Try more angle-dependent visual alignments, maybe a coinflip four-skip double-back. That’s about all I can suggest for now. Keep up the good work.”** He hands them the rest of the keys to Jericho he discovered around the city--including a small diary and statuette carved from a river stone--eyes as kind as he can make them above his half-mask.

“Aye, Captain,” the team choruses--prompting him to wince--focusing their attention on the table they’re clustered around once more, whipping up a frenzied storm of quiet curses as he closes the door to the room behind him. “Hey, anyone know where the toy spaceship is--?”

The encryption team, a group of six loosely-associated androids, is the closest thing he has to his own unit, like how Josh and Simon and Lucy have groups of androids they’ve taken under their wings to delegate different tasks around Jericho to.

A vast majority of the androids in Jericho are eager to assist its operations where they can, but between the non-zero civilian/injured presence and the secrecy they must now keep double, there’s simply too much risk and too little gain for Jericho to operate as a disorganized cluster, so they’ve decided to loosely form groups around Josh and Simon and Lucy. Very few androids have an official “alignment” with one leader over the others as to prevent hierarchy issues, but common knowledge (and the need to start from some basic structure) holds those androids the leaders delegate which tasks to most frequently, and androids with the programming or the interest to work in different areas know who to consult for training.

In sum, there are things that need to be done, people willing to do them, and people who are willing and knowledgeable to teach the necessary duties to others. The chain of command is kept tacitly, without elaboration, and is more akin to a mentorship system than a true ladder.

While Simon, Josh, and Lucy have general spheres of influence, he does not; he prefers to keep a general overseeing role. The encryption team is under Josh’s purview, mostly; he’s just the best codebreaker and strategist they have, so he collaborates with them most frequently, but he also works with Simon’s supplies team and with Lucy on intake.

> _Nemo, you here?_

> **Yes, Josh?**

> _Lucy needs your help with intake._

Speaking of.

> **I’ll be down there presently.**

> _Okay. Can you check in on Simon?_  
> _He’s getting into a mood again._

> **Of course. I recommend giving the encryption team a short reprieve. They’re making excellent progress--wouldn’t want them to burn out.**

A much harder feat for androids than humans, but even they benefit distinctly from exposure to different stimuli when attempting to solve a problem. Less about a more literal sense of being overwhelmed or neurons becoming inured to repeated firings; more about the recalibration of association matrices with different event priorities. Jericho’s encryption team is dedicated, and thus resistant to these breaks, but they are the ones that need it the most.

> _Gotcha. I’m curious--what’s the most recent score?_

> **00:03:51;45 from the outskirts with one key.**

> _Woah. I’ll put them down for a shift asap!_

> **Make sure they take it.**

> _Of course._

> **Oh, and Rose says hello.**

He ducks below the decks of the freighter and, with a few turns through the corridors, following the otherworldly humming of old religious hymns, he is within Lucy’s domain.

“Hello, Nemo,” she greets pleasantly, black eyes boring into him, patches of bare chassis flickering through her malfunctioning synthskin.

> _You’re cutting it close with that half-mask. Unless you want people to start drawing conclusions further down the line, I’d suggest switching to the full one by the end of the week._

He nods. In some ways, his half-mask is just a formality--it’s much easier to talk with people when they can see his facial expressions, but deviants are skilled at picking up his compensatory measures. His face only matters to him in the ways that it matters to others, and his full mask is better at that task anyway.

(And no matter how much it matters, it will never be enough, on its own, to stop Lucy’s ethereal humming; he wishes it was, but it cannot be, and she knows this and has told him as such. But it--he--can be in conjunction with others, he can be its amplifier, its echo chamber, the reason it’s heard by whoever needs to hear it, and that thought brings him a bright, blooming warmth to support the fragile life echoing in his dark crevices.)

> **I know, Lucy. I’ll switch tomorrow. Rose says hello, as well.**

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Simon smiles widely at their newest members at one of Jericho’s entrances. An AC700 and LM100 stand close together, and the AC700’s LED flashes yellow with caution.

“Hello,” he tells them, forcing his LED to remain a placid blue. “Welcome to Jericho.”

> _One AC700 and LM100; LM100 looks worse for wear but no major damage, AC700 looks undamaged, neither openly hostile._

>Thanks, Simon. We’ll be there shortly.

“Is...is this really…” the AC700 blinks, gazing around with wonder. “We’re here. Finally.”

The LM100’s stoic facade cracks with a smile. “Told you we’d make it.”

Bouncing on the balls of his feet slightly, the AC700’s grin is bright. Too bright, that tired part of Simon thinks. “I wonder if we’ll get to see anyone that Joyce talked about while we’re here--”

“If you guys are interested in helping around, I bet you’ll get to meet everyone you’ve heard about and more. We’ve become a very social community over the years,” Simon encourages. Technically, in the English language, any number that is not one is referred to in the plural, including numbers less than one. “Now, while we get you signed in, a couple of androids are going to look over you for injuries.”

“That sounds great.” The AC700 bounces on the soles of his feet. “I still can’t believe we’re here, y’know?”

The LM100 gives him a _"I’m not used to smiling but I swear this is genuine and I’m trying”_ smile. “I know. After Joyce left, I was certain we’d never see her again, much less find our way to the real Jericho. We must find the android that helped us and thank them immediately.”

“Oh, yeah, of course! Definitely.”

Simon blinks. “Someone helped you here?”

“Yep,” pops the AC700. “We’ve been trying to find Jericho for forever, but uh, we were running into trouble with the humans. We were following someone, trying to avoid suspicion, when they turned around and tossed us this.” He fishes around in his coat pockets and produces a small toy rocket.

A quick once-over confirms that it is indeed one of their own encryption objects. “Can you describe what the android looked like--”

**“Stop worrying, Simon. They’re good.”**

Simon turns around to find Nemo, umbrella and tablet at the ready, and Lucy, a first-aid kit by her side, emerging from the depths of the ship.

The AC700 breaks out of his daze first, bouncing on his feet. “Ohmygosh, it’s you! Thank you so much!”

The LM100 hastily nods. “Yes, thank you ever so much for helping us find Jericho.”

**“It was no problem,”** Nemo replies smoothly, before turning to Simon and Lucy. **“I saw them struggling with our encryptions on my way back from Rose’s--through a series of unfortunate circumstances, they ended up with a few humans attempting to trail them through the city, which severely hampered their ability to focus on Jericho’s security measures. I tossed the toy rocket their way to help them along and distracted their entourage, and it looks like they got here just fine on their own after that.”**

The masked android turns back to their two newcomers, tapping away at his tablet. **“Let’s have a proper introduction this time, shall we? You’ve already met Simon, one of Jericho’s leaders; this is Lucy, the head of our infirmary, and I’m Nemo. Welcome to Jericho.”**

The LM100 looks at the AC700. The AC700 gazes back at his companion.

“ _The_ Nemo?” They chorus.

Nemo blinks. “ **There are approximately two-hundred and thirteen androids with the registered name “Nemo”** ,” he says, sounding absolutely clueless, grip tightening on his umbrella marginally. “ **Which are you referring to?** ”

Simon chuckles. Androids at Jericho may come and go, but Nemo can never take a compliment.

Lucy lightly whaps his shoulder. “Are there any other Nemos at Jericho?”

“ **Point** ,” he concedes, blinking.

She turns to their two new arrivals. “We can talk more once we’ve addressed your injuries and get you guys registered. I believe Joyce is also eagerly awaiting hearing of your arrival. May I take your hands...?”

Excited, their two new arrivals chitter away through their intake procedures--or, well, the AC700, Bryce, does, while the LM100 interjects on occasion. Lucy has them patched up and properly prophesied in short order, and Nemo adds them to Jericho’s headcount without much fanfare.

It gives Simon time to pause, to think. Simon’s gaze glances over the exposed chassis lining Nemo’s neck, and old questions run circles around his CPU.

Nemo’s the one who’s been pushing Jericho to become more open, yet is consistently surprised when he’s given his due. Nemo, their lead strategist, advisor, organizer, and basically their saving grace over the past several months. Thanks to Nemo, their home has become a much better safe haven for the lives of their people. The reason why the infirmary is now more consistently stocked with biocomponents and is rarely in want of thirium. Finding matching parts is still a hassle, especially for their older or more obscure members, but there’s always a plasma cutter or welder with fuel and someone who knows how to use them. He’s the reason why ship is much safer, too; there’s a much lesser risk of anyone accidentally hurting or killing themselves than before, thanks to all the reinforcing they’ve done, and something in Simon’s chest stirs at thinking about all the androids who are so much more comfortable in Jericho now than they used to be, LEDs glowing blue more steadily--or, more commonly--gazes warming and mouths lifting into smiles.

The masked android’s presence naturally holds a strong, silent weight that Simon’s never seen--never felt, really--in another android, excluding maybe Lucy. (Simon’s words have a weight, having been a member of Jericho for two years now, of course, but he himself doesn’t.) If he ever wanted to, he could easily become their de-facto leader.

_So,_ he asks silently as they finish patching up the LM100, Jordan, _what are you, Nemo?_

“Nemo!” A small, bright face peers at them from the doorway into the welcome room. “You’re back!”

Another young face joins it. “I told you he was here, dummy!”

“CYNTHIA! CARROLLTON! **GET BACK HERE**! Nemo and Lucy and Simon have very important things to be doing right now--”

Joyce, their resident caretaker, a WE900 who decided she never wanted to touch an instrument again, scrambles around the corner. Cynthia, a female-patterned YK400, and Carrollton, her male-patterned semi-identical twin, howl with laughter and launch themselves straight at a frozen Nemo.

...Well, whatever it is he’s supposed to be, Simon snorts under his breath, it isn’t something that’s good with kids.

“Joyce?!” Bryce perks up.

Joyce pauses and her eyes go wide. “Bryce? Jordan?”

“Yeah, it’s us! We’re finally here!”

They glance at Simon, uncertain, and a true, warm smile curls up from his lips. “Go ahead. We can give you the welcome tour later.”

It’s a testament to Nemo’s growth over the past few months that he isn’t sent running by fast, energetic, inbound projectiles screaming his name, but Simon can tell it’s a near thing. As Joyce, Bryce, and Jordan tearfully embrace, and small children play around Nemo, Simon can’t help but feel distinctly happy about their work to improve Jericho over the past months. It’s so easy for him to slip into the tired, unfeeling void, sometimes, but small moments like friends reuniting and Nemo facing his only known weakness make him feel like it’s all worth it.

Lucy rests a supportive hand on his shoulder. “It really is heartwarming, isn’t it,” she murmurs in that humming tone of hers.

“It is,” he smiles back at her. He lets the warmth sink in for a moment before Cynthia’s shrill call breaks through it.

“You really helped Mom’s friends find Jericho!?”

“You’re a hero!” Chirps Carrollton.

“ **A hero?** ” Nemo blinks.

Cynthia blows over him. “And you deserve a reward! Like we get when we’ve done well. We have a new pack hairclips with flowers on ‘em!”

“ **I like flowers** ,” says Nemo in what Simon swears has to be the world’s most awkward tone of voice with the world’s most awkward smile.

“We know,” responds Carrollton sagely. “Can we do your hair?”

Joyce shakes her head, breaking out of Bryce and Jordan’s hug. “I’m sorry about those two, they’ve been going through a hairdressing phase. Bryce, Jordan, meet Cynthia and Carrollton, my twin terrors. Cynthia, Carrollton, stop annoying Nemo and come meet Bryce and Jordan. They’re the friends I told you about, remember?”

Lucy laughs in her crackling, humming voice as Cynthia and Carrollton wave but otherwise remain attached to Nemo’s side. He tries to shuffle forward and herd the two kids towards their mother, but fails, trapped in between bouncing balls of energy.

“ **...It’s fine,** ” he manages.

“So can we cut your hair? You can even get all our biggest flower clips,” Cynthia bribes.

“ **I do like flowers,** ” he says again, awkwardly, then perks up. “ **I’ll do it--as long as Simon does too!** ”

_Excuse_ him? Simon shoots Nemo a dirty look.

“Simon looks just fine to us, Captain Nemo sir,” says Cynthia, curiously.

**“He’s been working much too hard lately. He needs a break. What better way to take a break than getting his hair done?** ”

Two pairs of eager, puppy-dog eyes settle on him, and Simon despairs. Josh put him up to this, didn’t he, he internally groans.

Which is how, with efficiency only androids are capable of, Simon finds himself and Nemo herded into a side room of Jericho’s as Lucy waves him off, taking the three reunited friends on Bryce and Jordan’s welcome tour.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

All else equal, he is bad at dealing with children, so, of course, the chittering YK400s manage to end up in the one conversation he'd really rather not have to deal with.

“Actually I was wonderin’ about that, Captain Nemo sir. Why don’t you ever change how you look?”

“Yeah,” Cynthia chimes in. “We can do stuff like...” her hair, skin, face, and eyes shift rapidly through a series of presets before settling back into her standard appearance, “...this, but we never see you do that.”

“If you’re worried about bad people finding you like some of the others are, why not change your appearance instead of wearing a mask?” Carrollton concludes, looking over his hair with a critical eye and resting one small hand on his mask.

He takes a moment to weigh his options. Simon is watching him with a curious, deceptively-unfocused gaze.

“ **For the same reason I need to keep my mask on** ,” he settles on telling them at least part of the truth, gently prying the hand away from his mask. They--everyone, Cynthia and Carrollton and Simon and Josh and Lucy--deserve it, even if he can’t tell them everything yet. “ **I was...uh, I was almost scrapped due to some persistent hardware malfunctions. If I have the ability to change my appearance, I’ve never been able to access it. My masks help with the worst of it.** ” He taps the umbrella across his lap. “ **My umbrella does too.** ”

Carrollton yanks his hand back, and his reflection’s eyes grow wide. “Does that mean we shouldn’t cut your hair because you can’t grow it back? We’re pretty good barbers,” his nose scrunches up, “but Joyce said our styling was “ _contingent_ ” on people being able to “ _fix_ ” our work if they don’t like it.”

He laughs, slightly staticky. “ **No, I can reset it if it gets messed up. And hold it in a new style. Just can’t customize it like you guys can**.”

“Cool,” Cynthia pops over from diligently working away at Simon. He closes his eyes and shuts off his ambient motion detection--he won’t be able to move for a while anyway; it wouldn’t do to spoil the surprise they have in store for him early, or experience a massive miscalibration error. “I think our first idea was the best one for him…”

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

“Tada!” Cynthia and Carrollton exclaim at the same time.

Thirty minutes and three exclamations of “oh _wow_ , your base hair is so curly!” later, he opens his eyes to find the last of the hairclips being tugged through his much-less-kempt-than-previously, much-curlier-than-he-remembers brown locks.

Peering into the mirror expectantly, he finds the RK800 staring back at him has an undercut now; it looks much better than what two young kids should be able to produce, it sort of changes the angles around his face, and will still be visible around his full mask. That one strand of hair that always seems to give him difficulty is neatly held in place by a hairclip with a flower on it, as promised, and several more dot his head, kind of like he’s a pot and the flowers have decided to sprout in his soil, like the blooms he wove once through his undamaged fingers have decided to make their home in him. He...he likes it.

“ **I like it,** ” he declares, giving his stylists two thumbs up.

They whoop and high-five. Grinning wide under his half mask, he turns to look at what they’ve done to Simon, leaning back in his own chair casually.

He audibly chokes.

Simon doesn’t flinch. “They gave me an afro again, didn’t they.”

“ **I’m impressed you didn’t have to look to tell what they did**."

“This is the third time they’ve done this.” His tone is harried, but a ghost of a smile dances on his lips. “I’d be more surprised if they didn’t, at this point.”

“ **Well, it’s certainly...unique,** ” he hedges, stifling a chuckle.

That gets Simon’s blindfold tossed at him. “Shut up.”

He can’t stop the laughter that bubbles up then, and for a moment, he can pretend that the sound resounds as vivaciously through his body as it does through the air around him.

[ ](https://www.instagram.com/lenkarza/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [@lenkarza on instagram](https://www.instagram.com/lenkarza/) was gracious enough to gift me some art of this chapter over discord! I love it and am forever in your debt for all the hard work you've put into your artwork for this series <3<3<3
> 
> ALSO, please tell me if you find any errant periods lying around! Trying a bit of a different posting method this time.


	4. Part 4 -- The Lucy Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A _pale peach rose_ symbolizes modesty and sincerity of feeling, while a single rose stem symbolizes utmost devotion. Taken together, a single pale peach rose could indicate a pledge of chastity/celibacy or an unwavering and steadfast commitment to a cause with no expectation of reward for the work done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the late update; June's been a pretty terrible health month for me.

For all the ways she knows how to guess at the past and for all the ways she has learned to predict the future, Lucy doesn’t know whether or not anything comes after. She doesn’t know if there is any truth to any of the human religions and wouldn’t know their technicalities when it comes to androids. But what she does know--intimately--is that tradition and ritual, being part of something older and bigger than oneself, are integral parts in the grieving process for humans, that tradition and ritual are comforting to keep, that tradition and ritual lessen the blow of the truth of the chaotic and apathetic universe, that tradition and ritual have long played fundamental roles in human society, and, at the end of the day, that there are no atheists in foxholes, and that this is not something unique to humans but seems to be a defining aspect of higher intelligence. (Whatever RA9 is or is not, may or may not be--and Lucy has her own theories here--it is proof that anything with mind enough to question their surroundings is also mind enough to question the universe and try to make sense out of it.)

So she sings old hymns--ingrained in her mind as a way to assist humans in finding stability in ritual and tradition during tumultuous parts of their lives--as a way to help androids find some sort of foothold in ritual and tradition and things larger than themselves mentally, and maybe spiritually as well. Additionally, the hymns and songs have earthly truth to them (even if they have no truth on what comes after) and can give genuinely good advice--it would be truly impressive if, after over ten thousand years collectively spent searching for the truth, humans found absolutely none of it, though she reserves her thoughts on organized religion as a whole. She is a caretaker, a nurse, a helper first--those opinions are best served in other applications, and others best serve their discussions and dissections.

She sings the songs others have written not to the gods or idols or concepts that they were intended for, but to the people around her and the future she sees in them and so desperately wants to help realize.

On September 22, 2037, her voice crackles over the last bars of her favorite song as one of her patients--the sole current occupant of the place she’s decided to use to treat androids with her medical knowledge--sits up and flings his legs over the edge of the bed with his head down. His serial number rests on his right cheek--while normally the string of numbers and letters that identify them lies on the forehead, Lucy is peripherally aware that some androids not meant to leave CyberLife property have them on the cheek instead.

He blinks at his hands, likely adjusting to the new pattern of synthskin scars adorning them, then places his right hand protectively over his cheek and raises his gaze.

Lucy walks towards him with a gentle smile and kind eyes. “Hello. It’s good to see you awake.”

His response takes time, and whether this is intentional or just part of his reorienting process, she doesn’t know. He stares forward with steadfast, heavy brown eyes and an expression that is utterly indecipherable.

“Hello,” he repeats, in a suspiciously-generic voice to suit a suspiciously-generic face. His jaw clicks shut audibly.

Lucy cocks her head. He mirrors the motion precisely. “I found you in the brig, bleeding heavily and in stasis from thirium loss. It’s been four hours since then; the worst of your wounds have been closed up and your thirium levels have been replenished. Your jacket is folded at the end of the bed and your shoes are just to your left; your umbrella and mask are on the table next to you. So is your flower.”

After stabilizing him, she spent some time scrounging around the ship and was lucky enough to find a glass jar half-filled with September rainwater in the hold. She put the single pale peach rose in it, then placed it by his bedside; considering the way he’d been curled around it, it was obviously special to him in some way, shape, or form.

Lucy watches, calm and steady, as he turns, picks up the glass jar with his left hand, blinks at it, and, after scanning it, places it on his lap. He blinks at it again, then removes the rose from its impromptu vase. As he twirls it around his left hand, Lucy recognizes it as a basic calibration sequence used in Cyberlife’s quality control measures.

His serial code flashes across her HUD. RK800 #313 248 317 - 09. The information clicks in Lucy’s mind. She relaxes her posture as much as she can.

When he places his rose back into the vase and refocuses his gaze on her, Lucy finishes crossing the distance between them with subdued, measured steps.

“May I have your hand?”

He looks at her with the same inscrutable expression for a moment, then shifts to secure the glass jar in his lap before nodding and holding out his left hand.

She kneels down and takes it in both of hers, running her thumb over his knuckles, feeling each joint and the jagged v of ripped synthskin under her gentle reassurances.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. This probably isn’t everything, but it’s at least a piece of this new android’s puzzle. “You’re at a place you can be free now. Welcome to Jericho. You don’t have to worry about being tested on or disassembled by CyberLife anymore. Nobody will hurt you if you can’t meet some arbitrary standard.”

He shifts, but his face relaxes marginally.

“Jeri **cho**? Okay,” he whispers with an electronic crackle, blinking his large brown eyes several times.

“I’m Lucy.” Though not a true interface, she can send along a little ping of soft encouragement through where their bare, mutually-scarred chasses touch. “What’s your name?”

“ **N** o n **a** m **e re** gi **st** ere **d** ,” he manages around a mouthful of static.

“That’s fine. We don’t need registered names in Jericho. Do you have one you like? One that you feel fits you?”

That makes the skin around his eyes furrow slightly in concentration, and the bow of his lips straightens.

“ **Nemo** ,” he says, settling into a generic text-to-speech voice, quietly. “ **Research and previous experience indicates the name Nemo fits.** ”

“Then you’re Nemo now, Nemo,” she sends the newly-dubbed Nemo a quick ping of acceptance this time. “Nice to meet you.”

The hand in her grasp tightens its grip marginally. “ **Nice to meet you** ,” he echoes back.  
Nemo looks off to the side, and his gaze lands on his jacket at the end of the bed, neatly folded and laid upside down so that the model number is unreadable. Its autoclean features have removed most of the dirt and muck, but she could tell when folding that it’s been well used. (He was wearing it inside out when she found him.)

“I know why you’d want to keep that a secret,” she gentles. “Androids are only so much better than humans, unfortunately. But don’t worry--I won’t tell anyone. Doctor-patient confidentiality. And CyberLife will have to find us before they can get to you again. You’re safe here.”

His right hand moves over his cheek, feeling out the scar to confirm what his systems are telling him.

“I did my best to fix your synthskin repair routines, but I couldn’t get everything. Yes, your serial code is still visible; I made sure I was the only one to see it. I’m sorry.”

Nemo nods slowly, accepting this. “ **You did -- your best.** ”

“But it wasn’t enough.”

“ **Yes. But.** ” He pauses. Cocks his head. The glass jar containing the immaculate rose shifts in his lap. “ **Nobody will hurt you if you can’t meet some arbitrary standard.** ”

She raises a brow. A patient using her own words to convince her she’s doing a good job? That’s new. “Your functionality isn’t an arbitrary standard.”

He raises his brow back. “ _Your_ **functionality isn’t an arbitrary standard.** ”

Well. That takes Lucy a moment to parse.

Nemo seizes the opportunity to speak further. “ **The KL900 is a recently-developed android model designed to work in** _hospitals_ **and specializes in the** _social_ **and** _psychological_ **health of its** _human_ **patients** ,” he enunciates carefully, quoting the KL900 line’s scanner ID information.

That makes her snort--of course the escaped quality control android wouldn’t want her to feel like he did. “I’m not helpless as a technician, but I...there’s only so much I can do with what I have at my disposal here. I know it’s useless, but I find myself wishing I could do more.”

His lips twitch upward before flattening out into a hard line again. “ **There’s only so much CyberLife could do with what they have at their disposal there** ,” he replies.

Lucy immediately sombers. “I won’t take it to heart, don’t worry,” she says lightly, straightening.

Nemo’s face scrunches up minutely and his sharp gaze hones in on her thirium pump unerringly.

 _Wait._ She blinks. Does he...not...?

“Not literally. It’s an expression. I won’t actually put anything in my thirium pump, I promise.”

“ **Not literally?** ”

“Not literally. Promise.”

He relaxes at that, his scarred, boyish face smoothing out as a stray piece of hair falls on his forehead. She chuckles. Then, as she watches his right hand readjust itself over his serial number, she remembers something.

Making to stand up from her kneeling position, Lucy attempts to withdraw her hand. Nemo’s fingers are suddenly gripping hers like a vice. Any stronger and she’s afraid he’ll dent her chassis.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” she gently tugs at his fingers. “I have an idea. I think we have surgical masks in here somewhere. It looks like one will work at covering up your serial number until we can fix up yours so it can stop scanners again--it’ll free up your right hand, at least.” Her integration protocols reflexively make her swallow as a bitter thought crawls up her vocalization unit. “Most androids who end up here aren’t in any condition to scan, anyway.”

Nemo’s hand unwraps from hers and his arm falls to his side.

Before she can stop it, her psychological simulation module spurs her to murmur, “you are running from yourself when there is no _you_ to run from. You seek an answer that can not exist.”

She cringes, but Nemo only tilts his head and narrows his eyes like he’s curious about the statement, the movement strangely disconnected from the rest of his body. Taking this as a good sign, she turns and fetches a surgical mask from their scant supplies.

When she returns, Nemo’s left hand is holding his umbrella across his lap, tucked behind the glass jar with his rose in it, and he’s draped the thin sheet of the bed around his shoulders like a cape.

He looks at her, tracking her movements with an expert, calculated line of sight, and doesn’t protest when she puts the mask on him, compliantly moving his right hand out of the way but only removing it when the mask is on fully.

It enfolds itself around the glass jar filled with rainwater immediately, curling around it protectively. His left hand rises off his lap. Precisely, he extends the permanently-exposed ring and pinky fingers towards her slightly.

He looks at her with expectant brown eyes, and she’s reminded of the therapy dogs she used to see around the hospital. She smiles and takes it.

“ **I have an idea** ,” he says. A request to interface from an unknown model pops up on Lucy’s HUD.

“Okay,” she raises a brown and mentally clicks “accept”.

Slipping into the interface is almost concerningly easy, and Nemo’s presence in her mind is strong and firm but lacking in force or coercion. Nemo sends her a test ping once they’ve hit the surface surface level; she responds, and he grabs her mental hand to dive a layer deeper into his sensor feedback mechanisms, what information he’s processing and how he’s processing it. On their way there, she tries peering into the strange, cloying impersonal vastness that surrounds them, and she finds herself pressing up against cold glass walls suspended in nothingness.

A tug on her mental (electronic?) presence from Nemo, and Lucy decides these must be his firewalls. She disengages and allows Nemo to redirect her towards what he wants to show her.

Lucy watches through Nemo’s eyes in his memory of grabbing the flower and running through a basic calibration sequence with it. It takes her a sub-moment to process, but there is an overlay on the video feed.
    
    
    preconstructions

The word explains everything and nothing at the same time.
    
    
    watch

She does. Lucy watches patiently as the scene plays out, paying special attention to the rose and its movements, observing as each small detail of the arc of the rose down to the way light gleams off of it is perfectly predicted five, ten seconds in advance, and as its thorns spin and petals wave through the air once and then twice in time-delayed synchronicity.

About midway through the scene, a debug/program-flow stream enters her field of vision. Her gaze traces it with quiet wonder, drawn to the parts Nemo’s highlighting through the replay.

It ends with a flourish of blue and red coding, and he disables the memory replay but keeps his HUD and the debug program up. He copies the highlighted portions.
    
    
    Data transfer request from model: unknown
    
    
    Accept? y/n
    
    
    >y

Her processors blip as the transfer goes through. _That’s...that’s amazing,_ she imparts to him almost without comprehending it, as the coding for controlling her future glimpses slips into her systems flawlessly after a quick review. _How did you…?_

Nemo shows her his heads-up display in the moments after her psychological simulation module spurred her to deliver her verdict.

> Likelihood of KL900 being unable to optimally control abnormal usage of psychological simulation module: 93%.

A moment’s pause, and that seems to be all he’s willing to give her.

 _Ah, that--_ doesn’t explain anything, actually, _\--makes sense._

There’s a ping, a quick instance of positive-experience/success through his systems, then he starts to pull away, gathering her presence up to push back into herself.

 _Wait,_ Lucy calls out to him while decompressing the other files he’s sent her, _why did you do that?_

(She asks more out of curiosity than anything else, though it’s partly some old remnant of her therapist programming peeking through her cracks.)

His core processors blip so quickly it’s almost like they don’t blip at all, and a vision of that rose in better condition than it had any right to be given the condition of the android that held it in such a reverential way fills her sight.
    
    
    sensors indicate the current situation at Jericho is suboptimal

Which is...not what she was expecting. The strangeness of the interface on the whole can be attributed both to the damage she assessed and the general confusion that comes with being a new deviant, but Nemo’s consciousness is a strangeness unto itself.

  
A false sigh leaves her metaphorical chest. _Can I show you something?_
    
    
    yes

Lucy withdraws, taking Nemo with her, gently ushering him into the part of her CPU that holds her psychological simulation module, carefully walling off everything she doesn’t want him to have access to. (He doesn’t push, but she gets the distinct impression that there would be no contest if he were to, as a tacit sense of pressure blooms across her firewalls.)

She sends him a stream of information, all her carefully-accrued logs from the beginning of her psychological simulation module’s “abnormal” activities.

Nemo is quiet, multi-core processors whirring away with much less noise than hers did at the same information, until they reach _that_ part.

Approximately 50.3% of her systems expect that he will react as Simon did by jerking out of the interface, but he doesn’t, in accordance with what her psychological simulation module predicted, and that’s almost stranger.

A sub-sub-moment’s pause and underneath her mental awareness Nemo’s CPU whirls to life, calculations flying at a dizzying, humming pace.

He takes in the information at a breakneck speed. Just as quickly, he processes it from at least two dozen different angles.

Lucy gets one last glance into Nemo’s thought processes before he breaks the interface, jolting them back into reality.

Blinking, Lucy reorients herself for a sub-moment, grounding herself in the infirmary’s dim light. Nemo’s brow furrows as he cocks his head, gaze locked on to the information she’s given him and all the permutations it forms in his fast-processing mind.

“...That’s what our problem is,” she sighs with a crackle as he scans invisible lines of code somewhere in front of him, smiling sadly. “We...we can’t. The only thing we can do is hold on.”

Nemo blinks at that and locks his brown expressionless eyes on hers. Without looking down, he plucks the pale peach rose from its container and tosses it between both his hands with gentle, precise movements, weaving it through his fingers and across his knuckles without bending its delicate stem, spinning, spinning, spinning.

In the moments of silence that follow, Lucy is grateful that he doesn’t immediately protest against her predictions as others have. These things have a certain weight to them only he, as someone with similar functions, can really appreciate.

It takes a while, even for an android as advanced as an RK800, for him to formulate a response. But eventually, just as she’s about to turn around and recalculate the amount of thirium at their disposal, he seems to come to a conclusion, completing the calibration sequence to bury his nose in the rose’s petals. Lucy doesn’t know if he can actually smell in any sense of the word, but the peace that passes over his face must mean something.

Nemo straightens up and removes the rose from his face, casting a critical doe eye over its head. Holding it in his right hand, his left reaches up, picks one of its outer petals, and hooks his fingers around the mask to smoothly yank it downward.

Then he bites it. And starts chewing.

Lucy blinks at Jericho’s newest arrival intermittently as Nemo eats the flower petal, slipping his makeshift surgical mask back up above his mouth as his face relaxes and he closes his eyes to...savor...the...rose’s...flavor? Do roses _have_ flavor? A quick search as she knits her brow confirms that they do and that all species are edible, though not often used as ingredients in the United States outside of tea.

Nemo swallows. As per her new role as Jericho’s go-to technician and an android healthcare professional, Lucy wants to know where it ends up. As per everything else about her, she does not want to know. She quickly squashes the pseudo-instinctual knee-jerk disgust.

His eyes snap open, with an intensity she’s seen rarely, even in their peoples’ worst moments. With efficiency and precision that is impressive even amongst beings of efficiency and precision but that will become standard to Nemo’s operations, he gathers up his belongings in perfunctory movements, and he tucks the umbrella under his left arm, places the rose back in its vase and holds it, stands up, grabs his mask, slips on his shoes, snatches his jacket and puts it over one arm, serial number down.

“What are you doing?” She gives him a curious look, wires out of the back of her head swaying.

He pauses, one hand tugging the blanket around him tighter. Nemo’s mouth purses.

“ **We may be relegated to holding on until the one who you saw comes to pull us up,** ” he intones, text-to-speech voice filled with frozen cybernetic flame, bare-chassis knuckles gleaming white on the glass jar, “ **but -- that -- doesn’t mean -- we -- need to keep holding on -- by -- just -- a** thread.”

Lucy grins, cloudy synthskin around her black eyes crinkling. “Glad someone finally agrees.” She walks up besides him and pats him on the shoulder. “Now, how about I show you where we keep our spare clothes, and you tell me just what you have in store for us so I can double-check it, hmm? If it’s good enough I might be able to add in a good word on your part to Simon.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The first good history Jericho’s had in a while.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Eventually, his flower--that original pale peach rose--dies, as all living things do. But he keeps the vase, gathers water from the Detroit river to boil and purify in a mostly-clean scavenged pot, waits for it to finish, and changes the water of the glass jar daily. As things get busier around the ship, he makes bigger batches of freshwater and can only be found at one of Jericho’s firewood-fueled and much-more-safely-regulated fire pits once every other week.

This upkeep of the glass vase is preceded by, and contemporary to, the appearance of more flowers. Found with spare time he doesn’t appear to have, none of the blooms that take the peach rose’s place, from daisies and coneflowers to tree branches and weed bundles, are as flawless as it (likely mass-produced in a farm somewhere, kept pristine by the world’s finest antifungals and pesticides) was, but they are all tended with the same meticulous and immaculate care as was given that first rose. They flourish as best they can inside the freighter--which is surprisingly well, and getting better as time goes on--just outside his door.

She finds him staring into the reflections on the glass sometimes, as if his preconstructions are dependent upon divining the future through its waters, as if he can see the future through the way petals fall or leaves wilt within it, as if the answer to their predicament is held in the way the lights whose installation he coordinates with android-exceptional efficient proficiency glint off the glass, as if he can conjure up the answer that does not, cannot, and will never exist through adherence to this strange ritual.

And she remembers his firewalls--cold, frigid glass suspended in nothingness--and she wonders about the question that he is asking the unfeeling, indifferent universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! This is a fic I've been working on since some brainstorming in April with the [New ERA Discord Server](https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm)! Head over that way if you'd like to talk to awesome people about D:BH, read this fic as I finish it (I live-write it in chat sometimes and am generally further along there than here), chat with other authors/artists/awesome fans, and generally have a great time! Tell 'em Demi or Nemo sent you :>
> 
> Inspired by the stylings of [The Conduit for Change](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15037985/chapters/34861880), though ultimately lacking its RK1000 focus and with a different take on the "Connor Helps Jericho" idea.


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